Essie Leading Lady Swatch and Review

Thursday, January 17, 2013

I was really looking forward to Essie Leading Lady. I rarely order Essie nail polishes online since my local Walgreens gets them pretty quickly. As soon as I saw Leading Lady it was on my must-have list and I ordered it online. Dark red with glitter, love it!

Leading Lady is a blackened red jelly base with metallic red glitter. It's from this year's holiday collection and it definitely says 'holiday' without being just like every bright red sparkly polish. The blackened base makes this one pretty yet slightly vampy.

The only bad part about Leading Lady is that the formula isn't perfect. I really struggled with this one, it's a bit thick and goopy, and the glitter doesn't like to stay on the nail. I've never used an Essie glitter before but I'm not hugely impressed. It was nearly opaque in one coat, but it took three in order to have an even coating of glitter. The formula was incredibly fast drying, which both contributed to a bit of my difficulty and my love of this polish. I can deal with three coats if they dry quickly!

It dried a bit rough, but not gritty. I could have gotten away without top coat but it took two coats to have a completely smooth surface.

Leading Lady is gorgeous and some suggest it as a great alternative to the now hard to find Essie Ruby Slippers. I think I like the darkened color of Leading Lady better than Ruby Slippers, but I'd still love to own both since I'm obsessed with red glitters.